Wandering Through Grace When I start a new story like this, I pluck a recent story from the recently saved ones and use its format to delete the story and replace the title. That saves me from having to choose a font and font size and get the alignment right. Today, the old story I plucked from the array was When Will You Make an End, which was about my Hobbit House, but starts off…
7,700 Steps Through Heaven Today we are in Rome with just a loose agenda of activities. We drove in yesterday from Amalfi and I dropped off the rental car at Stazione Termini while the gang found their way with the luggage to the AirBnB we had secured. The place is called The Spanish Penthouse in honor of the fact that it is at the base of Piazza de Spagna and is, indeed on the top…
Moonstruck Shire I have been asked by a loyal reader to break my policy of not publishing photos, so as a one-time exception, I am going to publish pictures of the completed Hobbit House you have been reading about. My daughter Carolyn suggested a build something like this for my granddaughters, my sister Kathy gave me a sign naming it Moonstruck Shire, my son Thomas helped me seal and waterproof the roof, my son Roger…
Of Mice and Men Tonight we are watching John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men that was made in 1992 with Gary Sinise and John Malkovich. Steinbeck wrote this novella (only 107 pages) in 1937 while he was gathering and creating his stories of the Great Depression and the travails of the Dust Bowl and all the soulful stories of real people caught in the backwash of a world gone sideways. Steinbeck was from Salinas, California,…
Sonny Boy My youngest son Thomas is coming for a week-long visit on Wednesday. He arrives at San Diego Airport right in the middle of my Ethics class lecture (assuming his flight is on-time). Since the following week is Spring Break and since I do not want to keep my boy waiting too long at the airport (even though it is only a ten minute drive from the campus), I will probably end the class…
Where to Live There are three considerations that have more impact on our lives than any others. We cannot choose when we live as that is the role of the dice we call procreation, whether you believe in the human soul or reincarnation or whatever. I suppose some people can determine actively or passively through their lifestyle choices, how long they live, but that is a very different issue. The other three considerations are the…
Betty Betty Betty My entire family has now gone to the dogs. Carolyn, who always wanted a dog from the youngest age and was denied by circumstances, had to invent her own dog in her plush Stieff floppy-eared mutt called Ted. As soon as she was in her own stable home environment with her now-husband John, they went and got themselves a little black and white Havanese that they named Abraham Lincoln or Abe for…
Return of the Monkey There seem to be many monkeys in my life. No, I do not live in the tropics of Costa Rica, where monkeys are constantly in the trees around you, making their presence all too obvious (as we saw a few years ago during a holiday visit to the fond place of my 5-6-year old life). In that never-never land of vagueness between an early childhood memory and a pseudo-memory that has…
Cadet Maxim Redux We have probably all seen the Cadet Maxim that originates from West Point, the U.S. Military Academy on the Hudson River. West Point is the longest continuously manned army post in the United States, having been established in 1778 and founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1802. That Maxim reads: Risk more than others think is safe Care more than others think is wise Dream more than others think is practical Expect more…
MLK and What It Means to Me Tomorrow is the national Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Holiday, commemorating the civil rights activist that was born Michael King Jr. on January 15th, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia and who preached and led the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. He advocated non-violence during a violent time in America’s history and he used civil disobedience and the resultant publicity that came…